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August 2023 SMR News
Welcome to the August Newsletter!
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- Meet your new Parish Consultant!
- August and September face to face training
- Cameras in church
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Meet your new Parish Consultant!
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It's exciting to introduce you to Ros Lloyd - the new ODSM Parish Consultant!
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As many of you may know, I head off on September 22nd for months of long service leave before retiring in early 2024.
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So it is excellent to have Ros in place for a handover period before that date.
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I'll leave Ros to introduce herself in the next newsletter, but I can say that she comes to us with a wealth of experience and skill that will serve her - and you - very well.
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During this handover period, Ros is working reduced hours, but if you want to welcome her, you can email her on ros@safeministry.org.au
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In addition to Ros as the new Parish Consultant, we also welcome Dane Ford (dane@safeministry.org.au) as the new web developer/tech support person in the ODSM. You won't hear from Dane very much, but be assured he will be working away behind the scenes keeping our websites and online training courses running smoothly.
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Face to face training
A quick reminder that we are running two face to face sessions - Essentials in August and Refresher in September - both at St Andrews House in the city.
Access is excellent, being directly above Town Hall rail station,
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Saturday August 26th.
Essentials - 9am-3pm - Level 2 St Andrews House
Useful info:
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- Applicants for face to face training need to have an account on the Safe Ministry Training website, log in and enrol in the course.
- Once they complete the course, they will be emailed their certificate a day or so later, and a copy of their certificate details sent to you, their SMR.
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Saturday September 2nd
Refresher - 9am-12:30pm - Level 2 St Andrews House
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Other dates and locations for 2023
Saturday 11 November 2023
St Paul’s Anglican Church, Chatswood | Essentials | 9am – 3pm
Wilton Anglican Church | Essentials | 9am – 3pm
Christ Church Anglican Church, Mortdale | Essentials | 9am – 3pm
St Paul’s Anglican Church, Riverstone | Refresher | 9am – 12.30pm
St George’s Anglican Church, Gerringong | Refresher | 9am – 12.30pm
St Michael’s Anglican Cathedral, Wollongong | Refresher | 9am – 12.30pm
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Enrolments normally open 4-6 weeks before each date.
Please encourage those in your church who would benefit from face to face training to get in and enrol - and be prepared to assist them if necessary with the technology.
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Use of cameras in churches
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I'm sure most of you are aware of the child care worker in Queensland who was arrested and charged with over 1600 child sex offences involving sexual abuse of very young children and production of child exploitation material.
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This is a horrific situation, but what struck me about some aspects of the case was the fact that he used his phone camera to take images and videos of many of the children he went on to abuse while working in child care centres. Photographing children is a normal activity in many if not most child care centres and used to 'update' parents during the day, so no one realised what the accused was actually doing.
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Churches are different, but this should make us re-think what is an appropriate policy for our churches to have in place about the use of cameras on church property or during church run activities.
I expect that there will be revised recommendations coming out in due course to help guide our churches in this area, but with every phone being a camera these days, this can and should be considered now.
So even if your church has a policy in place about photography of children, now is a good time to see if that needs to be tightened up or strengthened.
If your church does NOT have such a policy in place, now is the time to change that!
If nothing else, this is good time to remind all ministry leaders of the need for vigilance in this area and to have them recommit to not taking photos themselves - no matter how innocent - and being on the lookout for others (even parents) doing so.
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Please ID yourself
I have loved getting emails from many of you over the course of my years in this role, and I know Ros will to.
But can I ask that whenever you email myself/Ros, please include your full name and your parish's full name in your email sig. With 270+ SMR's and more parishes, it can be hard to place the person who signs their email 'Bec, St Marks'!
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So please be kind to Ros as she gets to know all of you and ID yourself in your communications with us.
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SMR Facebook Group
A reminder that we have a private Facebook group just for SMR's
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- A safe and private place for SMR's to ask questions, support each other, share ideas or solutions to problems, etc
- The address is: https://www.facebook.com/groups/173114257798286
- Involvement in this group is entirely optional - but it is proving to be a useful extra channel for SMR's to chat amongst themselves and pose questions to me.
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Keeping up to date with news
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An archive of all SMR Newsletters (since we moved to our new system) is available here.
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That's it for this edition! Back soon with more info about what is happening in the Safe Ministry scene.
If you are no longer the SMR for your church, please unsubscribe using the link below and drop me an email to let me know.
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